End of an era

Today is Sir Terry Leahy’s last day as chief executive of Tesco, the end of a remarkable career spanning 32 years at the grocer, 14 of them as chief executive. No individual has had a greater impact on the UK retail landscape in that time, and his work has had a profound impact on the global retail scene too.

List the achievements: Clubcard, internationalisation, non-food, online, private label, new formats like Extra and the convenience stores. Some of them pre-date Leahy’s time as chief executive but he would have been instrumental in their formation while marketing director and their maturity as CEO.

It’s the first item on that list - Clubcard - which sums up the really quite simple ethos behind Leahy’s success. He is obsessed with the customer. He is a marketer at heart, not a retailer, and that obsession with getting inside the shoppers’ mind, understanding what’s worrying her, and incentivising her not to be tempted to shop elsewhere has been at the heart of everything Tesco has done during his time in charge.

I can’t claim to know Terry well - I’m not sure anyone outside Tesco other than his family and friends could - but while plenty of people outside the organisation (who almost without exception have an axe to grind) have lined up to have a go at him, I’ve never met anyone who’s worked for him who’s had a bad word to say about him. To people within Tesco, he has always been loyal and supportive.

Once they leave though, they’re history. Some may see this as cold, and it probably is, but what it actually is is a reflection of Tesco’s utterly pragmatic approach to business. And pragmatic is a good way of summing up Leahy. He has been described wrongly as cold and almost robotic, but actually he’s a down-to-earth and really quite humble businessman, who never asked to be famous or powerful but became both through being really very good at his job.

He isn’t humourless either, contrary to popular belief. A highlight of Tesco’s bi-annual results presentations - occasions when Leahy always looked like he’d rather be anywhere else on earth - were his ultra-dry responses to any ill-informed questions from journos who hadn’t done their homework. I’ve always found him perfectly pleasant, and the closest I came to seeing the real man was interviewing him after he’d given a speech at the BCSC conference in his home city of Liverpool in 2008.

Terry was keen to talk about the regneration of his home city, and the role Tesco plays in bringing life back into run-down areas. At the time it was involved in a battle with planners to get permission for a development which would not only include a new store but also a new stadium for his beloved Everton. What was obvious was that Leahy was a man with enormous pride in, and loyalty to, his home city, a man who has never forgotten his roots, and a man who genuinely believed in the power of his industry to change people’s lives and the places they live for the better, and who was frustrated by the inability of others to see that.

I’m surprised he’s going now, as I thought he’d want to see the US business through to profitability. But running Tesco must be a hugely demanding job, and what does Terry Leahy have left to prove? He’s been there, done it and got the t-shirt.